Month: September 2022

But I’m a Cheerleader (2000)

Throughout September I will be raiding my collection of favourite movies to review one a day, with a focus on overlooked and underappreciated films.

Where to find it: Rent on Amazon
Length: 86 minutes
Synopsis: Lesbian romcom
Recommendation rating: 3/5

What I like about it: cute, funny, fluffy
What I don’t like about it: limited appeal due to camp nature

Review:
Director Jamie Babbitt presents a loving pastiche of the films of John Waters, while being far more enjoyable than anything he ever made. Natasha Lyonne plays Megan, an all-American teenage cheerleader. Everyone in town knows that Megan is gay, except for one person: Megan. Despite her protests that it is unnecessary (see title), her parents send her on a religious intervention at a compound in the middle of nowhere where she can learn appropriately rigid gender roles, unintentionally locking her away with a bunch of queer kids who strip away her last pretense of heterosexuality. Always a fun watch.

Content notes (may contain spoilers): conversion therapy, religion, sex

Palm Springs (2020)

Throughout September I will be raiding my collection of favourite movies to review one a day, with a focus on overlooked and underappreciated films.

Where to find it: Amazon Prime Video
Length: 90 minutes
Synopsis: Time loop romcom
Recommendation rating: 3/5

What I like about it: fun, funny, clever, pacy
What I don’t like about it: doesn’t quite stick the landing on its themes

Review:
Andy Samberg and Cristin Milioti play two people caught in a time loop while attending a wedding in Palm Springs. They try to reason it out philosophically and grow attached to one another. It’s definitely smarter than the average rom-com but it still follows the standard three-act structure (boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl) and if it makes perfect sense as a metaphor, I must have missed it. Still, the comedy makes it worth trying.

Content notes (may contain spoilers): sex, injury, violence, suicide, vomit, drugs

This is Going to Hurt (2022)

Where to find it: BBC iPlayer
Length: Seven 45-minute episodes
Synopsis: The NHS is broken and it breaks the people trying to hold it together
Recommendation rating: 4/5

What I like about it: funny, good drama and acting, compelling medical action scenes
What I don’t like about it: bleak and bloody

Review:
Adam Kay adapts his best-selling memoir very well and allows his character, a great fit for actor Ben Whishaw, to be complex and very flawed. Kay is a junior obstetrician who, by and large, feels compassion for his patients and therefore is doomed to crash out of his chosen profession during a mental breakdown. He takes his stress out on his house officer Shruti and his lovely boyfriend Harry, who deserves better. It’s a compilation of all the ways that the National Health Service is fucked, strung along by fourth wall-breaking wisecracks and gruesome, tense moments of surgery. Super grim and tough to get through but it carries strong messages.

Content notes (may contain spoilers): blood, medical procedures, genitals, childbirth, vomit, death, sex

The Last Supper (1995)

Throughout September I will be raiding my collection of favourite movies to review one a day, with a focus on overlooked and underappreciated films.

Where to find it: Rent on Amazon
Length: 90 minutes
Synopsis: Liberals decide to kill conservatives
Recommendation rating: 3/5

What I like about it: clever themes, good ending, biblical imagery
What I don’t like about it: mostly a talky play and not a great one

Review:
A group of friends gather for a regular dinner party, they discuss liberal political topics and quaff expensive wine. They take in a stranded traveller who does not share their views and in fact turns out to be very racist. This escalates into a confrontation in which one of the group kills him. After clearing away the mess, they find they have quite the taste for killing awful conservatives and even flatter themselves that doing so may “prevent the next Hitler” and so they arrange to do it again, this time intentionally inviting people whose opinions they dislike and poisoning them. They do it again and again, with increasingly less stringent vetting, before an ending ties the themes up nicely and makes a solid, somewhat-unexpected statement in doing so. Not a great film overall but well worth watching for the execution (pardon the pun) of its ideas.

Content notes (may contain spoilers): violence, racism and hateful dialogue

A League of Their Own (2022)

Where to find it: Amazon Prime Video
Length: Eight 1-hour episodes
Synopsis: Women play baseball and sleep with each other
Recommendation rating: 3/5

What I like about it: generally fun, gay
What I don’t like about it: just not very interesting

Review:
Every time this true story gets told, it sheds ever more fact. This time they make no pretence to historical accuracy, which keeps the story light but means whenever they make reference to the awful circumstances of the time, it feels cheap. Abbi Jacobson and D’Arcy Carden are great as the primary couple but in truth it’s an ensemble, the Hispanic team members particularly shine. Along with the story of the Rockford Peaches is the story of Max (Chanté Adams), turned away from the Peaches for her melanin levels, desperately trying to find anywhere that will let her play ball and be her beautiful butch self. Max (along with her friends and family) is by far the most interesting and memorable part of the show.

The trouble is it never generates much interest outside of its romances and rigorously follows feelgood sports-movie tropes such as the dramatic, overwritten locker room pep-talk and the hero selflessly helping a competitor cross the finish line, complete with swelling strings and everyone applauding.

Content notes (may contain spoilers): sex

Sorry to Bother You (2018)

Throughout September I will be raiding my collection of favourite movies to review one a day, with a focus on overlooked and underappreciated films.

Where to find it: Rent on Amazon (sometimes on iPlayer)
Length: 110 minutes
Synopsis: Surreal social comedy about ‘hustle culture’ and labour relations
Recommendation rating: 5/5

What I like about it: radical, hilarious, cool
What I don’t like about it: gets weird

Review:
The Coup frontman and avowed communist Boots Riley makes his directorial debut with this parable of modern life. LaKeith Stanfield plays Oakland telemarketer Cash Green (*smirk*) who finds a secret that improves his job performance and splits his loyalties away from his less-successful friends, who are organising a union. Things come to a head when he ingratiates himself with his Silicon Valley CEO and sees life from his perspective. It’s absurd from early on and gets so surreal at the end that it’s all people tend to remember of the film if they don’t get it, but it’s genius.

Content notes (may contain spoilers): violence, body horror

Slow Horses (2022)

Where to find it: Apple TV+
Length: Six 50-minute episodes
Synopsis: Slightly more lighthearted Spooks knockoff
Recommendation rating: 2/5

What I like about it: occasionally funny or decent action
What I don’t like about it: pointless, not enjoyable

Review:
Gary Oldman plays washed-up, disgusting spymaster Jackson Lamb who runs a team of spies who have fucked up bad enough to not be trusted but not bad enough to get sacked. New to his team is third-generation spy River Cartwright (Jack Lowden) and together they get involved in a far-right terrorist plot that doesn’t ring true until they reveal the whole thing was drummed up by MI5. Olivia Cooke has the most interesting character in this and so she is duly killed offscreen in episode 2. Not terrible but not at all good.

Content notes (may contain spoilers): violence, racism

The Importance of Being Earnest (1952)

Throughout September I will be raiding my collection of favourite movies to review one a day, with a focus on overlooked and underappreciated films.

Where to find it: YouTube
Length: 90 minutes
Synopsis: Classic comic play
Recommendation rating: 3/5

What I like about it: wordy, hammy, fun
What I don’t like about it: unimportant, problematic

Review:
The most popular and successful of Oscar Wilde’s plays, this bawdy farce finds two rakes assuming false identities to woo various ladies. Many quotable lines and fun farce with an unbearably syrupy ending.

Content notes (may contain spoilers):

The Black Power Mixtape: 1967-1975 (2011)

Throughout September I will be raiding my collection of favourite movies to review one a day, with a focus on overlooked and underappreciated films.

Where to find it: YouTube (may not be the best copy)
Length: 100 minutes
Synopsis: Documentary on the Black Power movement
Recommendation rating: 5/5

What I like about it: great film, great subject
What I don’t like about it: it’s not narrative, more a meditation

Review:
Through the years featured in the title, a Swedish documentary crew toured the United States, interviewing figures involved in the Black Power movement – including Angela Davis, Kwame Ture and Huey Newton – for a sympathetic television documentary back home. Here, this footage is raided and assembled with modern-day voiceovers from Angela Davis, Talib Kweli and Questlove, among others. The intimate access gotten by the Swedes makes this unmissable – see an extended prison interview with Davis, Ture burning his draft card and a class of Black Panther children turning Wilson Pickett’s Land of a Thousand Dances into an anti-police resistance chant.

Content notes (may contain spoilers): racism, violence, guns

Le Diner de Cons (1998)

Throughout September I will be raiding my collection of favourite movies to review one a day, with a focus on overlooked and underappreciated films.

Where to find it: Rent on Amazon
Length: 80 minutes
Synopsis: French farce
Recommendation rating: 3/5

What I like about it: wordplay, farce, not too long
What I don’t like about it: requires significant attention

Review:
Rich snobs hold a regular dinner party where they compete to bring the biggest “idiot”. One of them meets his match in his latest mark and his life unravels in the style of a farcical play. A fun mix of comedy-of-manners and comedy-of-errors.

Content notes (may contain spoilers): ableism in dialogue, less in plot